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Economic Outlook: David Smith: If Britain is doing so well, why doesn't it feel like it?

ON March 16, when he presents his ninth budget, Gordon Brown will roll out an array of statistics to demonstrate how well the economy has been doing under his management, punching home Labour’s political advantage in this area.

On the face of it, his claims will be hard to dispute. I have on several occasions lauded the economy’s record run of 50 successive quarters of growth, combined with 11 years of low inflation and a low level of unemployment that is the envy of Europe.

But now the moment has come to face up to a question that has been troubling me for some time and is regularly raised by readers. If things are so marvellous, how come it does not feel like it?

Britain’s economic miracle might, one would have thought, have led to more obvious evidence of prosperity, the kind of easy confidence encountered in Germany or Japan